Developing a Framework for Measuring Disability-Inclusive School Quality in Nigerian Basic Education Contexts

This doctoral study develops and validates a comprehensive framework for measuring disability-inclusive school quality in Nigerian basic education contexts, addressing the absence of a contextually valid, empirically grounded measurement system for evaluating inclusion quality in Nigerian schools. Existing school quality frameworks developed internationally, including UNICEF's Child-Friendly Schools framework and UNESCO's Inclusive Education Quality Indicators, provide useful starting points but require substantial contextualisation to account for Nigeria's specific governance structures, resource constraints, cultural dynamics, and disability landscape. The study follows a systematic framework development and validation process across five phases: systematic review and gap analysis; stakeholder consultation workshops across all six geopolitical zones involving five hundred educators, parents, disability advocates, and government officials; Delphi expert consensus study; pilot testing of draft indicators across forty schools; and large-scale psychometric validation in three hundred schools. The resulting Nigerian Disability-Inclusive School Quality Framework comprises validated indicators across five domains: leadership and governance, teaching and learning, physical and communication access, social belonging, and family and community partnership. The framework demonstrates strong content validity, construct validity, criterion validity, and reliability. It provides a unique, contextually grounded measurement tool for researchers, policymakers, school improvement practitioners, and development partners working on disability-inclusive education in Nigeria. Keywords: school quality framework, disability inclusion, measurement, Nigerian basic education, validation.